Van Jones Knows What We Have to Do Next

In an exclusive interview with Van Jones before tonight’s CNN special, The Messy Truth, Mark Anthony Green speaks with the man who comforted liberal America on election night about everything: why it all went wrong, the difference between bigots and Trump voters, and where we go from here.

Mark Anthony Green: So I wanna talk about this special. But the first question I want to ask you, it's a complicated question. The question is: Are we fucked? Are we going to be okay, Van Jones?Van Jones: Look, that depends on what we do. This is the most dangerous political period I think the country has entered since probably the Civil War, in that we have a president who from a psychological point of view seems erratic and from a political point of view seems to be authoritarian. And that is a very bad combination. I mean, you could have a kleptocracy in the United States much like you have in Russia, where the head of state is enriching himself—blatantly enriching himself and his family and driving down rights and respects in the country. The Republican Party is gonna have to make a decision: How much of his behavior are they going to tolerate? Think about this: The Republican Party was worried about Hillary Clinton making $100 million giving speeches and running a foundation. This guy, his family is running a multibillion-dollar conglomerate with no blind trusts to avoid any conflict of interest. His role model seems to be Putin. The mere fact that this is the kind of thing we have to worry about is very, very scary.

Tell me about the new special [Editor's note: The Messy Truth, tonight, December 6, on CNN at 9 P.M.]. Was this a direct response to the election, or was it something you were working on and it just so happened that Trump actually got elected?
Going back a year ago, I was focused on trying to build a bridge of trust and respect with Trump supporters even at CNN. I've been very clear that, no matter who won the election, the day afterward, Sanders' voters were not gonna leave America, Hillary's voters were not gonna leave America, Trump voters were not gonna leave America, Black Lives Matter was not gonna leave America, and the cops were not gonna leave America. We're all still gonna be here the day after the election. Two weeks before the election, I went to Pennsylvania on my own with an independent film crew, to go into the homes of Trump voters and ask: Are we on the edge of another civil war? There's that much division. And you can see the results of that at messytruth.org. I am a no-apology left-wing-of-Pluto progressive, but that doesn't mean I can't work with people I disagree with. I worked with Newt Gingrich on criminal-justice reform and the opioid crisis. You're not gonna find two people who disagree on more than me and Newt. People have forgotten that your 99% enemy can be your 1% friend on a point where you agree.

“A lot of people in the United States have been living in Trump’s America for a long time. If you’re undocumented or poor or black, you’ve been feeling this way for a while.”

Trump had dinner with Mitt Romney recently. You see all of these people who were so against him—probably no bigger example than Ted Cruz—and now they're, at best, trying to work with him so he doesn't mess up too horrifically and, at worst, kissing the ring. Should Mitt Romney be trying to work with Donald Trump to help make things better?[Long inhale] Mmm. I think all the Republicans are now in a damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't position. If they stand back and things go really bad, they may feel guilty. If they stand back and don't help and things go well, they may feel stupid for not having participated. They lean in and help, they may find themselves in a Nixon-style, scandal-ridden presidency—while, on the other hand, maybe they lean in and they make America, you know, great just by having a commander who has serious mental-health issues. If you walk through the decision-making tree with any Republican, as I have, it's hard to know what to do. And we don't have a normal Republican government in formation. It's really a conservative populist alliance. Paul Ryan wants to keep the TPP trade deal and privatize Social Security; Trump wants to tear up TPP and he expressed no real interest in privatizing Social Security. Trump put in Reince Priebus as a kind of "normal" conservative—but he also put in Bannon, who is, at least by association, a nightmare. The days of easy answers and simple binaries are really over. We've gone over the waterfall.

Younger voters feeling disgust, like everyone's phony—I don't think it's that simple. I think it's a very complicated question. What do you do when someone like Trump actually wins? Do you ignore your own party? Do you denounce the whole country? Do you get in and try to make it work? Do you think maybe you were wrong? Everybody's going through a lot of complex thoughts, and the tendency to reduce everything to either a "This sucks" or "This is awesome" choice is a big problem for the younger voters especially.

The day after the election, I was in the office and an editor asked a question: "What can I do?" And I'm curious to know what you would say. Tell us what to do! You've got the answers, Van![Laughs] Well, first of all, people have to understand the problem. The problem is not primarily that there are millions of people with bad intentions. That may be true, in part, but the bigger problem is that there are millions and millions more people with good intentions who don't know how to act on them. As scary as it is, it's actually much more hopeful than most people are experiencing it as. I see millions more people who want to get involved than who wanted to get involved a month ago, when it most likely would have mattered more. [Laughs] So, first of all, the most important thing we can do is figure out what the good people can do. We are going to lose more than we win for the next two to four years. It is going to get much worse before it gets any better. [Laughs] A lot of people in the United States have been living in Trump's America for a long time. If you're undocumented or poor or black, you've been feeling this way for a while.

Now, what can be done about it? The problem is not the bad people doing all the bad stuff, it's the good people who don't know what to do yet. The good people—there's more of us than there are of them.

Are you sure of that? Are you sure there's more of us than there are of them?
I am one thousand percent sure that there are tens of millions more good people than there are hateful, bad people. Without a doubt. Even Trump's voters did not vote to endorse all his crazy nonsense any more than all of Hillary's voters voted to endorse everything she ever said or did. We've got to recognize that people voted for complex reasons. And a big chunk of Trump's voters will not support him doing the worst of what he said. If he unleashes hell on American Muslims and starts dragging dreamers out of college classrooms, a big chunk of his own voters will turn on him.

“He shouldn’t be called Tim Kaine. He should be called Tim Kaint. He kaint inspire young people, he kaint inspire people of color, he kaint inspire women, he kaint.”

To hear you be so optimistic does make me a little more optimistic—but I will say, my optimism levels are at an all-time low right now.
That's fine. That's to be expected. I will say this: A big problem that we had with the younger voters is that they thought they were being asked to choose between the lesser of two evils. And there's no young, idealistic person ever born who wants to support evil of any kind. But nobody explained well enough, including myself, that it was never the choice between the lesser of two evils. It was only a choice between the better of two strategies. One strategy would have put in a sub-optimal, moderate Democratic president. More Republican than Democrat most of her career. The other strategy is to put a lunatic in office who will not listen to you, no matter what you say.

So it's not that we have the greater of two evils. We have the worst of the two strategies. The reason you feel helpless is because a whole generation of millennials chose this strategy. They chose the strategy of, let this guy get in office and then, I don't know, shrug. If Hillary had gotten into office, you would have had a lot of strategies: You could have protested, demonstrated, lobbied. You could have gotten a lot out of her. You'd have to fight her every step of the way, but you could have gotten a lot out of her.

This guy? You may get a nuclear war out of this guy. And it's not that one's more evil. It's that one's a better strategy. So we're now living in this strategy—that a lot of progressives picked—which was not to fight hard to stop him. Not to fight hard to elect Hillary Clinton and hold Hillary Clinton accountable. Don't be mad at Trump! To me, we have two things to be mad at. I'm a very strong progressive. It's very hard for me to get excited about this election, but if you look, please look at what I posted in June. Have you seen that?

Yeah, of course!
I don't just mean the Brexit freak-out, I mean…

That's what I saw. The Brexit piece.
I did my Brexit freak-out trying to warn people. But I also did a video with MoveOn.org, "The Three Dumb Ideas Progressives Have (That Are Gonna Elect Donald Trump)." I explained exactly how he was gonna win, that the demographics weren't gonna save him. I named the states that were gonna fall. This is in June! I had known this group. I didn't have a big data operation, but going around the country talking to people, I called this back in June. It was always the better of the two strategies to vote for Hillary Clinton and then hold her accountable. Everybody would say, "Well, I can't stand either one of them." Well, you're now in that world. So being in that world, our short-term strategic options are limited. But there's a lot that can be done.

But I don't know any progressives who made this choice, Van. It doesn't feel like progressives made the choice. I know that nobody's good, nobody's bad. It just seems like we don't have the numbers. It doesn't seem like the progressives did it.
Nope. I disagree. So many things to say! So there are two problems that we had. One was younger progressives being asked to vote for Hillary Clinton [felt like they were] being asked to vote for the lesser of two evils. I think that if progressives had fought as hard for Hillary Clinton as they fought for Bernie, as Bernie asked them to do, then we would have been much closer to winning, and probably won, and the same progressives would be feeling empowered right now. But the lack of enthusiasm of young progressives did have an impact.

Do you think Hillary Clinton would have won if she had made Bernie Sanders her vice presidential nominee?
It is hard to know. Her VP pick was a disaster. He shouldn't be called Tim Kaine. He should be called Tim Kaint. He kaint inspire young people, he kaint inspire people of color, he kaint inspire women, he kaint. She should have picked someone for VP [who would have] given women or people of color or progressives some signal. It was a tremendous mistake. It showed a level of arrogance.

“We thought that this was going to be a referendum on the racist part of the Republicans, and instead it became a referendum on the elitist part of the Democratic Party.”

Because people felt so bad about the results, they're taking it easy on Hillary. But to me she played to not lose, instead of playing to win—and that, like you said, feels very arrogant. How much of her losing do you put on Hillary?
There comes a day when the candidate has to take responsibility for the outcome. I was in Ohio for this CNN special, The Messy Truth. I sat with Trump voters who voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump. And it was a fascinating conversation, because they felt that she did not reach out to them. It was very simple. They were willing to ignore a lot of the detestable things that Trump said about other groups because Trump was saying, "Look, I'm gonna bring your factories back. I'm gonna open your old mines again," and they felt he was speaking to them. They did not feel that she was speaking to them. They felt she was speaking to special-interest groups and minorities and to Trump's flaws, but she was not offering them a better future. That was the other problem. I think progressives didn't fight as hard for Hillary Clinton as I bet they wish they had now. I think there's a level of elitism in the Democratic Party.

I think the Democrats have a level of elitism in our party that we've almost gotten comfortable with. Which is not to say that every Democrat is an elitist. It's just to say that you have a certain level of coastal cosmopolitan snobbery that feels comfortable in our party. And it turns off a lot of people. I think both political parties have problems. The Republicans have a problem, too. There's a level of bigotry that seems to have found a home in their party. That is not to say that every Republican is a bigot. Far from it. But for some reason, the bigots feel comfortable in that party. And it's hard for Republicans to see how that really turns off so many people.

And so you have a situation now where it seems that neither political party seems to truly respect all Americans. And that is a major problem. That's bigger than the difference over policy. When you feel that that other party fundamentally does not respect you, you cannot work well with them. Both parties are guilty of that. We thought that this was going to be a referendum on the racist part of the Republicans, and instead it became a referendum on the elitist part of the Democratic Party. A lot of those voters switched.

You always hear about the middle class because that's the majority and that's who votes. But if you're a poor person in America, have you ever felt like there was a party that truly cared about you?
I think the Democratic Party until the ’60s did. Trump turned off a lot of people, but Trump wasn't afraid to talk about urban poverty.

Let's go a different direction. I see two paths going forward. One is, we need to build a big love army for all the people who are vulnerable right now in the country. Trump built a tiny, cheap army, pulled in a whole bunch of people who are not hateful, but who are willing to turn a blind eye to hate to see some sort of change. We need to build a massive love army that can stand with the most vulnerable and take the country back in a positive direction. And that's gonna take time. But what does that mean, concretely? That means that all the Muslims, the dreamers, women, Jewish people, black protesters, environmentalists, and many, many more can't be left to fight on their own. The first thing we have to do is put back that 2008 coalition.

Listen, we're gonna lose a lot of appointments, we're gonna lose a lot of bills, a lot of legislative fights. We're gonna lose much more than we win at the level of policy and politics. We've got ground to make up now on the level of values. So I'm gonna be calling for national days of action, love-army days of action. Once a week, we're gonna nationally reach out and do national teach-ins. Do one on the Muslims, do one on the Native Americans, one on the Hispanic population. It's not the women over here, the blacks over here, the Latinos over there. That's gonna be an important thing, and just getting those teach-ins going across the country. Getting big concerts going across the country just to restore people's faith and getting people re-engaged. You're not by yourself crying. There are tens of millions of people who agree with you. You're just disconnected from them. So the first thing we need to do is reach everybody who's shattered and blown apart. We have to reconnect people to our values first.

You know, it's a very small number of people who are part of the alt-right. People act like 50 million people just signed up to be part of the neo-Nazi movement. That's not true! You have a group willing to tolerate the participation of people like that, and that's scary. But it's wrong to convince yourself that people who are willing to put up with it are themselves bigots. And that's where the left is going wrong. The left is making it a binary choice: You're either with the bigots or you're with the progressives. You're a racist or an anti-racist. You're either a sexist or an anti-sexist. And based on that binary, we now have convinced ourselves that half the country is raving-lunatic white supremacists. That's not true! It's more of a range.

But, Van, if you would vote for one who is going to put in power white nationalists, how are you not guilty of allowing it? I think you're letting them off the hook a little easy.
Well, here's the deal. This is why people are inordinately depressed. That analysis you just gave—if you voted for a bigot, you are a bigot, or not much better than a bigot—that analysis has done much more harm to progressives than it's done to Republicans.

But is it untrue?
Yeah, it's untrue. Because for most people who are not liberals, it's a range. It's not a binary choice. You have a minority of people on the right who are excited by racists, and those people I would call bigots. You have a much larger number of Trump supporters who find a lot of that stuff distasteful, but it's not disqualifying to them. They don't like those comments. They think they are inartful and bad. But to them, as hateful as those comments are, they're not disqualifying given their own economic needs and concerns. And liberals refusing to see a difference seem to think half the country is in a position it's not in. We're not in touch with reality. Look, it makes me sad that somebody says, "I don't hate you. I just don't like you enough to vote differently." But that's different than someone saying, "Actually, I do hate you."

I agree that it's different. But one is the worst thing, and the other thing is just really bad. You know?
Fine, but still...you have to deal with the country you live in. If you write off all the Trump voters and say all of them are part of the white-nationalist movement, and if Trump goes and starts attacking these dreamers, who will be standing with you to protect the dreamers? There are veterans who voted for Trump who, if Trump tries to take civil liberties away from American Muslims, will be marching with you in their uniforms, saying, "That's not America." We need to wake up to the fact that, as disappointed as we are in some of the Trump voters, we shouldn't be disgusted with the vast majority of them. There's a small percentage of them that are horrible. It's sad that the rest of Trump supporters are willing to put up with them, but that doesn't make [all Trump voters] irredeemable.

Part of the reason that I'm having this conversation with you is because progressives need to look in the mirror and say, "The left wing of our party didn't fight as hard as we should have, and it was a bad strategy for us. There's elitism in our party that showed up a thousand different ways. It cost us the Rust Belt." In 2008, the Tea Party was in the same situation that we are in. Obama had the White House, the Senate, and the House. And they lost and lost and lost for two years. They lost on the stimulus, they lost on Obamacare, and then they won in 2010.

But Uncle Joe, though! Would Uncle Joe Biden have pulled it out?
Biden would have been more competitive. But let me just tell you this, and I know it's gonna make you sad about your country: I've never seen a celebrity lose. Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Jessie Ventura, weak-ass Sonny Bono! Any celebrity that I've seen as a Republican or an Independent has always won! Biden would have been more competitive, but I think we have to start realizing: You know what? Celebrities are gonna win stuff. I mean, Clay Aiken didn't win his race, but I don't think Clay Aiken really counts on the same level yet. Most of the time, celebrities win.

The game is different.
The game is different. I think in the digital economy, the limiting factor is not money—the limiting factor is time and attention. You can be a billionaire and still be short on time. Celebrity is a hack for a time. Celebrity is a hack for attention. If you already hacked the mindshare of America, you have a mass advantage over somebody who says, "I can raise a bunch of money for ads." Well, I ain't watching your ads. I'm zapping through your ads. People have thought that the key to winning office was the ability to raise money. I think the key to winning office is the ability to get attention. Celebrities know how to do that. That's why they're celebrities.

So, look, man, you asked me a bunch of hard questions. I'm never gonna talk to you again.

Listen, I ask the tough questions because I need the real answers! Like the rest of America, when you said what you said on election night, I thought, "I'm gonna listen to that guy for the next four years to get through this."
Well, I'll tell you, I would have rather given a bad speech about a good outcome than given a good speech about a bad outcome. But, you know, it's just where we are.

Watch Now: Keith Olbermann on How Trump Is Steering Us Toward National Disaster

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